Calibre ‘shifts left’ into place and route

Siemens has extended its market-leading physical verification platform with the public launch today (July 10) of Calibre DesignEnhancer, a toolset for use during place-and-route (P&R) in a context that is automatically correct-by-construction and DRC-clean.

The new software extends Siemens take on the ‘shift left’ design strategy that seeks to move complex and sensitive tasks further up the traditional design flow.

“What we’re trying to do with ‘shift left’ is help our customers do more intelligent work sooner – make sure that they are Calibre-clean sooner – so that you’ve got to do less work at the end,” said Michael White, Senior Director, Physical Verification Product Management for Calibre Design Solutions.

“We’re doing that by adding new verification capabilities in the midst of you doing cell design, block design and so on.”

Calibre DesignEnhancer has a particular focus on reducing or eliminating issues that can arise around voltage (IR) drop, electromigration (EM) and other challenger. It does this based on three use models: DE Via, DE Pge, and DE Pvr.

White explained the main objectives behind each.

“DesignEnhancer Via is focused on via insertion, reducing resistance because you’re doing via insertion to improve the design’s robustness and improve IR drop,” he said

“DesignEnhancer Pge is designed to address power grid enhancement  with a focus on EM/IR improvement again as well as that focus on being Calibre-clean as you’re doing the interconnect insertion performed in this flow to address hotspots present in the design.

“The last use-model is Calibre DesignEnhancer Pvr and it’s focused on inserting structures, decoupling capacitors, ECO cells, filler cells – cells that need to be inserted in the design while you’re doing P&R before I stream out to a full Calibre design rule check.”

Figure 1. Calibre DesignEnhancer use models (Siemens EDA)

Siemens says that the new use models were customer-driven and that four out of five of the top fabless companies are already using one or more of them.

Via insertion can be as high as one million, and in earlier use the company claims that customers have seen reductions in IR drop issues of as high as 90 per cent, and 10X faster runtimes for filler cell insertion.

All three forms of Calibre DesignEnhancer are now available and Siemens will also be hosting a lunch featuring customer cases studies tomorrow (Tuesday, July 11) at the Design Automation Conference in San Francisco. More details are available on that event and the tool at the Siemens booth (#2521)